When you think of how to build a house, would you think of grain silos? It might sound strange, but one man did just that—in an effort to build an energy-efficient, green house, Jeff Moore acquired two silos and turned them into his home.
He lives in his silo house now, and it has all of the amenities he wants!
Repurposed & Recovered. Rather than getting new materials, one of the things Moorewanted to do was to focus on using repurposed wood, getting it from houses being demolished and junkyards.
Almost all of the pieces used had come from demolished homes, including windows, doors, wood, and the roof.
Energy Efficient. The other important thing for Moore was energy-efficiency. Because he was going for green building, it was important that his home be as energy efficient as possible.
He’s done this by adding solar panels for power and building all of the windows on the south exposure so that the house, windows, and sun regulate the home’s temperature independently of a thermostat or heating and air.
Luxuries. If you think that his focus on green building has left him without luxuries, that’s not at all true! He has fresh water gravity-fed from a spring, a fully-functional flushing toilet that drains into a septic tank, a propane-run refrigerator, and a water feature that can be both a swimming pool in the summer and a fire-fueled hot tub in the winter.
In addition to that, he has wireless internet, as well!
The cost of all of this? $40 per square foot, roughly one-third of the cost of a standard home built today. The one drawback, Moore says, is the time invested—after five years, it still isn’t finished to the point he wants it to be.
If you had the time and resources to build a home out of anything, what would you choose?
